We in the Labour Party welcome this Bill. It can be a small step towards an important aim, which is tackling air pollution and improving the quality of the air we all breathe in every city, village or rural area across our country. We all have a right to clean air. I pay tribute to groups like Irish Doctors for the Environment, which play an important role in fighting for this right across our country and educating us all on both the physical and the mental health effects of air pollution, and we can reduce them. The effects of air pollution are well documented. The EPA in its Air Quality in Ireland 2024 report found that around 1,700 premature deaths occur in Ireland each year because of poor air quality. The ESRI estimated in 2023 that between 2016 and 2019, a four-year period, acute healthcare costs for treating five conditions associated with air pollution, including asthma, cardiovascular conditions and things like that, amounted to €56 million. The costs of air pollution, therefore, in terms of both money and lives, are known. What is also well documented are the drivers of air pollution, in particular the role that the burning of solid fuels plays in driving down air quality in our towns and rural areas. The EPA has identified nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter as the two pollutants most responsible for poor air quality in Ireland. The burning of solid fuels in homes is the primary source of one of these, PM2.5. That means there can be no excuse for burying our head in the sand and denying the clear link between solid fuels and air pollution and, in turn, no excuse for failing to recognise the link between air pollution and its effect on the health of our citizens. What is more, this is an area that international actors have moved on in recent times. In October 2024 the EU introduced its new ambient air quality directive, with much stricter pollution limits due to come into force in 2030. In doing so, Europe was aiming to gradually align its regulations with the WHO's more stringent air quality guidelines, which were published in 2021. The limit for fine particulate matter, PM2.5, would be cut by more than half between 2026 and 2030. The aim is to reduce premature deaths linked to pollution in Europe by 55% by 2030. We know how important it is to meet our EU and international obligations, whether it is in this area of air pollution or on broader questions of climate and emissions. The consequences of failing to meet them are something we have discussed in this House many times. Just as we need to reduce our carbon emissions to meet those binding EU targets, it is vital that we tackle air pollution to meet our newly agreed EU targets by 2030. That will be a challenge. Our air quality in Ireland is generally good, and we meet all the current EU requirements, but we fall well short of the WHO guidelines. The EPA itself has raised its concern that we will really struggle to meet the new 2030 EU limits. If there is cause for hope, however, it is that we know that this is an area where good regulation by central government can make a real difference. I can remember back to the Dublin smog of the 1980s, when I was a kid, and how that seemingly intractable problem was fixed by Government action. After campaigning by communities across the city, smoky coal was banned in the capital and we saw an immediate, dramatic improvement in air quality. That resulted in roughly 350 fewer needless deaths every year. I did not grow up in a PD household - far from it - but Mary Harney was always respected in our house because of the stand she took on smoky coal in Dublin back in 1990. Thousands of lives have been saved. It was our Labour Minister, Alan Kelly, who extended the ban on smoky coal nationwide in 2015, a ban which came into effect in 2018. The health benefits of these things are overwhelming. That progress has, thankfully, continued. The national air pollution control programme report in 2024 shows fine particulate matter, PM2.5, dropping 33% from the 2005 baseline to 2021. Regulation has worked in this area but, again, we can and we must go further. The clean air strategy committed to reaching the WHO's various targets. The Irish Heart Foundation estimates that there would be almost a thousand fewer premature deaths annually from air pollution if we could reach the WHO targets. That is definitely something worth pushing for. It is, therefore, welcome to see a Government taking this issue on and giving it the attention it deserves. This Bill is, of course, far from a silver bullet but ahead of the new EU regulations in 2030, local authorities and the EPA have identified gaps in the existing legislation, and the Government has moved to plug them, and that is certainly to be welcomed. By strengthening enforcement with reintroduced on-the-spot fines and the introduction of compliance notice, seizure and forfeiture powers, and clarifying regulatory processes through the registers being introduced, we will give meaningful powers, we hope, to local authorities. These powers will be used to tackle what is a real driver of air pollution in this country, which is the sale and supply of non-compliant solid fuels. The EPA has warned us of the catastrophic environmental damage that large-scale illegal peat extraction is doing across this country. Some 300,000 tonnes of peat is being illegally extracted on a commercial basis annually, nearly all of which is being exported, and it is worth about €40 million per year. This is - the Minister referred to this earlier - completely separate from anyone's personal turbary rights, which, of course, we support, but the illegal extraction and commercial sale of thousands of tonnes of turf is decimating vital ecosystems and biodiversity. It is destroying the country's natural carbon sinks, precious boglands that absorb greenhouse gases and are important in the fight against climate change. While I note that this Bill does not apply to illegal extraction, I hope the new enforcement powers under this Bill relating to the sale and supply of non-conforming solid fuels will have a material effect on the enforcement against this illegal trade in peat. We should note the Bill is backed by the industry's representative body, Solid Fuel Merchants Ireland. It recognises how unfair it is if some sellers try to get around the laws that are there for everyone's good and undercut their law-abiding competitors by importing substandard fuels from Northern Ireland or elsewhere. In its words: Honest, tax-compliant fuel merchants across the country have made major investments in cleaner fuels .... But they continue to be undercut by smuggled, high-sulphur products that evade carbon tax and harm our health. This legislation, if backed by real enforcement, can change that. This Bill will not revolutionise our air quality on its own but it is a welcome step in the right direction. It needs to be accompanied with resourcing for local authorities and the EPA to carry out these new enforcement and regulatory powers. Unfortunately, this is an area that has been neglected before, and if we are to have any hope that the measures we are discussing today will have a tangible impact, local authorities need to be backed to succeed on them. This is certainly something we learned from our discussion at the climate committee on this matter a number of months ago. A 2023 report by the EPA on the enforcement performance of local authorities stated that air and noise enforcement had the lowest level of dedicated resources, with only 10% of staff assigned to this area in 2022. In the context of the five national enforcement priorities for air and noise, only 61% of local authorities achieved the required standard for enforcement of the solid fuel regulations in 2022. These powers need to go along with the resourcing needed to make them effective. I would question the time it has taken to get this Bill here in view of the fact the general scheme was published in August 2024 and the Bill was published in July of 2025. It is disappointing that it only reached the Seanad in November and is only coming to this House now, almost two years after the general scheme was published. I understand that pre-legislative scrutiny was waived and that there was no open public consultation prior to the Bill being published. It seems that there was plenty of time to do those kind of things and to look closely at the Bill. It does not seem to have needed to be rushed in order to get to this point. The legislation is important. It is important that we get it right and have full and informed debate on all of these things. As with any debate on enforcement legislation, it is important that we pause and make clear that enforcement can only be part of the picture. Eliminating smuggled, non-compliant fuels from our supply chains is an important step. If we want to have any hope of reaching our targets on air pollution, however, we need to have carrots to go along with the sticks. That means taking the energy revolution seriously and turbocharging retrofitting and the roll-out of renewable heating systems. It also means protecting people from fuel poverty by targeting households on the lowest incomes for retrofitting grants and programmes and, as others have said, providing a just transition. It further means - in this week of all weeks - finally recognising that we need to invest as a matter of urgency in making this country the renewable energy superpower it can be. Ireland has a target of installing 400,000 heat pumps by 2030. The previous target was to install 45,000 by the end of 2025. The numbers being installed are nowhere near that. We need to reform the SEAI's grant scheme and aim for a rural energy revolution. The carbon tax plays an important part in financing just transition. That is why I was disappointed at the backsliding in respect of it this week. There are plenty of other measures this Government could have brought in to protect hauliers, farmers and everyone else who has to use oil and gas to get around the place. It could have used direct subsidies, direct payments and excise duty cuts. The Labour Party has supported all of those. Backsliding on the carbon tax sets a dangerous precedent, and the Government has made a rod for its own back when it comes to the budget in October. We all know that the carbon tax increase was set for May because that is when people are least likely to be filling up their home heating tanks and things like that. Investing properly in clean energy infrastructure both on the macro level and through individual household supports will not just help us reach our climate targets, it will help to tackle fuel poverty, safeguard our energy security and, pertinently for this debate, improve our air quality and save lives in doing so. We also need to recognise the other activities that can affect our air quality. Maybe it is the long shadow of the smog of the 1970s and 1980s, but we tend to think of air pollution in terms of billowing clouds of smoke from small houses or businesses. Of course, any additional activity that puts pressure on our energy grid consumption inevitably contributes to air pollution. As capacity is put under pressure on the grid, clean energy sources are displaced by fossil fuel sources. As An Taisce has pointed out, the rapid expansion in the number of data centres in Ireland is having direct and indirect effects, increasing both the cost of electricity supply and total resultant air pollution. The latter would not have happened in an alternative scenario in which no new data centres would have been allowed. If we are serious about air quality and clean energy in general, we need a moratorium on the building new data centres until we can be sure they will not strain the grid, inflate household bills or derail climate targets. The Labour Party has long called for this. The new private wires legislation going through pre-legislative scrutiny at the moment is only going to serve to expand the number of data centres around the country, which are likely to be fuelled by gas because of the lack of renewable energy sources at present. The cost of all of this will appear on to the energy bills of ordinary households and PAYE workers who are ultimately the people who are going to be paying for all of this. This Bill is a small step towards a goal that will be difficult to reach without more ambition. We welcome the measures in the Bill and we recognise the importance of tackling air pollution. It will have real effects on the health of many of our citizens. However, if we are serious - as we should be - about reaching the goals set out by the EU, we need to see more ambition than just what is in this Bill, but as I said, the Labour Party welcomes it.

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